supplement

 

sri aurobindo

 

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Volume 1

BANDE MATARAM

 
  THE CONSTITUTION OF THE CONGRESS  
  RECONSTITUTION OF THE CONGRESS  
  THE NEW SITUATION  
  LOYALTY AND DISLOYALTY IN EAST BENGAL  
  PARTITION AND THE GOVERNMENT  
  PARTITION OF BENGAL  
  PARTITION AND PETITION  
  THE PRO - PETITION PLOT  
  A POINT OF HONOUR  
  CONGRESS AND DEMOCRACY  
  THE CONSPIRATORS AT WORK  
  LAST FRIDAY'S FOLLY  
  MORE LESSONS FROM COMILLA  
  LALA LAJPATRAJ DEPORTED  
  LALA LAJPATRAI  
  GOVERNMENT BY PANIC  
  THE BAGBAZAR MEETING  
  A TREACHEROUS STAB  
  NOT TO THE ANDAMANS !  
  NO COMMON IDEAL  
  POONA SPEECH  
  NATIONAL EDUCATION (Speech)  

 

 

Volume - 2

KARMAYOGIN

 
  SWADESHI MEETING (Speech)  
  SWADESHI  IN CALCUTTA   (Speech)  

 

 

Volume - 3

THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE

 

THE PROBLEM OF THE MAHABHARATA

 
  THE POLITICAL STORY  
  UDYOGAPARVA  
  ON TRANSLATING KALIDASA  
  MEDICAL DEPARTMENT  

 

 

Volume - 4

WRITING IN BENGALI

 
  KAAROTOYAR BARNANA  
  AIKYA O SWADHNATA  
  ARUNKUMARIR HARAN  
  KOREA O JAPAN  

 

 

Volume - 5

COLLECTED POEMS

 
  FRAGMENTS  
  SONNETS  
  WORLD'S DELIGHT  

 

 

Volume - 7

COLLECTED PLAYS

 
  FRAGMENT OF A PLAY  

 

 

Volume - 8

TRANSLATIONS

 
  SAYINGS FROM THE MAHABHARATA  

 

 

Volume - 9

THE FUTURE POETRY

 

AND LETTERS ON POETRY, LITERATURE AND ART

 
  TO MY BROTHER ( MANMOHAN GHOSE)  

 

 

Volume - 10

THE SECRET OF THE VEDA

 
  THE ORIGINS OF ARYAN SPEECH ( First draft)  
  A SYSTEM OF VEDIC PSYCHOLOGY - PREFATORY  

 

 

Volume - 11

HYMNS TO THE MYSTIC FIRE

 
  A HYMN TO AGNI  ( Mandala 1, Sukta 74)  
  A HYMN TO AGNI  ( Mandala IV, Sukta 6)  

 

 

Volume - 12

THE UPANISHADS

 
  THE KARMAYOGIN - A COMMENTARY ON THE ISHA UPANISHAD  
  ISHA UPANISHAD: ALL THAT IS WORLD IN THE UNIVERSE  
  THE LIFE DIVINE - A COMMENTARY ON THE ISHA UPANISHAD  

 

 

Volume - 15

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL THOUGHT

 
  PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION OF "THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY"  

 

 

Volume - 17

THE HOUR OF GOD

AND OTHER WRITINGS

 
  BANKIM CHANDRA  
  SAPTA - CHATUSHTAYA  
  THE WAY OF WORKS  

 

 

Volume - 18 - 19

THE LIFE DIVINE

 
  ARGUMENT IN BRIEF AND S7OPSIS CHAPTER -I, THE HUMAN ASPIRATION  
  ARGUMENT TO THE LIFE DIVINE FROM THE ARYA, CHS. XIX - XXXIII  

 

 

Volume - 22--24

LETTERS ON YOGA

 
  LETTER ON YOGA  

 

 

Volume - 26

ON HIMSELF

 
  LETTER TO HIS FATHER, ( DR. K. D. GHOSE )  
  LETTER TO HIS SISTER, ( SAROJINI GHOSE )  
  LETTER TO HIS FATHER - IN -LAW,  ( BHUPAL CHANDRA BASU )  
  LETTER TO ANANDARAO  
  LETTER TO "M" ( MOTILAL ROY )  
  LETTER TO "THE HINDU"  

 

  MESSAGES  
  FOR NATIONAL EDUCATION WEKK  
  YOGA AND ITS PART IN THE DIVINE PLAN  

 

 

Volume - 29

SAVITRI

 
 

THE TALE OF SATYAVAN AND SAVITRI

 

 

SAPTA-CHATUSHTAYA

 

I. SHANTI-CHATUSHTAYA

 


Samatā sāntih sukham hāsyam iti śānticatusţayam.

Samata

 

The basis of internal peace is samatā, the capacity of receiving with a calm and equal mind all the attacks and appearances of outward things, whether pleasant or unpleasant, ill-fortune and good-fortune, pleasure and pain, honour and ill-repute, praise and blame, friendship and enmity, sinner and saint, or, physically, heat and cold etc. There are two forms of samatā, passive and active, samatā in reception of the things of the outward world and samatā in reaction to them.


1. PASSIVE

        Passive samatā consists of three things:


Titikşā, udāsinatā, natih iti samatā.

 

TITIKSHA

Titikşā is the bearing firmly of all contacts pleasant or unpleasant, not being overpowered by that which is painful, not being carried away by that which is pleasant. Calmly and firmly to receive both and hold and bear them as one who is stronger, greater, vaster than any attack of the world, is the attitude of titikşā.

 

UDASINATA

 

Udāsīnatā is indifference to the dvandvas or dualities; it means literally being seated above, superior to all physical and mental touches. The udāsīna, free from desire, either does not feel the touch of joy and grief, pleasure and pain, liking and disliking, or he feels them as touching his mind and body, but not himself,


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he being different from mind and body and seated above them.


NATI

Nati is the submission of the soul to the will of God; its  acceptance of all touches as His touches, of all experience as His play with the soul of man. Nati may be with titikşā, feeling the sorrow but accepting it as God's will, or with udāsinatā, rising superior to it and regarding joy and sorrow equally as God's working in the lower instruments, or with ānanda, receiving everything as the play of Krishna, and therefore in itself delightful. The last is the state of the complete Yogin, for by this continual joyous or ānandamaya namaskāra to God constantly practised, we arrive eventually at the entire elimination of grief, pain, etc., the entire freedom from the dvandvas, and find Brahmananda in every smallest, most trivial, most apparently discordant detail of life and experience in this human body. We get rid entirely of fear and suffering; ānandam brahmaņo vidvān  na bibheti kutaścana. We may have to begin with titiksā and udāsinatā, but it is in this Ananda that we must consummate siddhi of sarmatā. The Yogin receives victory and defeat, success, and ill-success, pleasure and pain, honour and disgrace with an equal, a sarma ānanda, - first by buddhi-yoga, separating himself from his habitual mental and nervous reactions and insisting by vicāra on the true nature of the experience itself and of his own soul, which is secretly ānandamaya, - full of sarma ānanda in all things. He comes to change all the ordinary values of experience; amangala reveals itself to him as mangala, defeat ill-success as the fulfilment of God's immediate purpose and a step towards ultimate victory, grief and pain as concealed and perverse forms of pleasure. A stage arrives even, when physical tin itself, the hardest thing for material man to bear, changes its nature in experience and becomes physical Ananda; but this is only at the end, when this human being, imprisoned in matter, subjected to mind, emerges from his subjection, conquers his mind and delivers himself utterly in his body, realising his true    ānāndamaya self in every part of the ādhāra.  

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2. ACTIVE

               It is this universal or sama ānanda in all experiences which
constitutes active samara, and it has three parts or stages,-



Rasah, prītih, ānandah...

        Rasa is the appreciative perception of that Guna, that āsavāda, taste and quality, which the Ishwara of the Lila perceives in each different object of experience (visaya) and for the enjoyment of which He creates it in the Lila. Prītih is the pleasure of the mind in all Rasa, pleasant or unpleasant, sweet or bitter. Ananda is the divine bhoga superior to all mental pleasure, with which God enjoys the rasa; in Ananda the opposition of the dualities entirely ceases.


Shanti

 

        Only when samatā is accomplished, can śānti be perfect in the system. If there is the least disturbance or trouble in the mentality, we may be perfectly sure that there is a disturbance, or defect in the samatā. For the mind of man is complex and even when in the buddhi we have fixed ourselves entirely in udāsinatā or nati, there may be revolts, uneasinesses, repinings in other parts. The buddhi, the manas, the heart, the nerves (prāna), the very bodily case must be subjected to the law of samatā.
         Sānti may be either a vast passive calm based on udāsīnatā or a vast joyous calm based on nati. The former is apt to associate itself with a tendency to inaction and it is therefore in the latter that our Yoga must culminate.


Sukha


         Sukham is the complete relief and release from duhkha, from vişada, which comes by the fulfilment of samatā and sānti. The perfected Yogin has never in himself any touch of sorrow, any tendency of depression, cloud or internal repining and weariness, but is always full of a sattwic light and ease.

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Hasya

        Hāsyam is the active side of sukham; it consists in an active internal state of gladness and cheerfulness which no adverse experience mental or physical can trouble. Its perfection is God's stamp and seal on the Siddhi of the samatā. It is in our internal being the image of Srikrishna playing, bālavat, as the eternal bālaka and kumāra in the garden of the world.


II. SHAKTI-CHATUSHTAYA

        This may be called the Siddhi of the temperament or nature in the lower system, in the internal Triloka of mind, life and body, Manas, Prana, Annam. To put it from a higher standpoint, it is the Siddhi of the divine Shakti working in these three principles.
 


Viryam, śaktih, candībhāvah śraddhā iti śakti-catustayam.

 

Virya

THE CHATURVARNYA
 

        By vīrya is meant the fundamental svabhāvaśakti or the energy of the divine temperament expressing itself in the fourfold type of the cāturvarnya - in Brahmanyam, Brahmashakti, Brahmatejas, in Kshatram, Kshatrashakti, Kshatratejas, in Vaishya, Vaishyaswabhavashakti and Tejas, Shudraswabhavashakti and Tejas. We must realise that the ancient Aryan Rishis meant by the Chaturvarnya not a mere social division, but a recognition of God manifesting Himself in fundamental Swabhava, which our bodily distinctions, our social orders are merely an attempt to organise in the symbols of human life, often a confused attempt, often a mere parody and distortion of the divine thing they try to express. Every man has in himself all the four Dharmas, but one predominates, in one he is born and that strikes the note of his character and determines the type and cast of all his actions; the rest subordinated to the dominant type and helps to give it its com-

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plement. No Brahmana is a complete Brahmana unless he has the Kshatratejas in him, the Vaishyashakti and the Shudrashakti, but all these have to serve in him the fullness of his Brahmanyam. God manifests Himself as the four Prajapatis or Manus, catvāro manavah of the Gita, and each man is born in the amśa of one of the four; the first characterised by wisdom and largeness, the second by heroism and force, the third by dexterity and enjoy- ment, the fourth by work and service. The perfected man develops in himself all four capacities and contains at once the god: of wisdom and largeness, the god of heroism and force, the god of skill and enjoyment, the god of work and service. Only one stands dominant and leads and uses the others.


BRAHMATEJAS

 

 

Jñānalipsā, jñanaprakāśo brahmavarcasyam, sthairyam iti brahmatejah.
 

LIPSA

        I give only the dominant qualities of the type in these definitions: The Purna Yogin does not reduce his nature to inaction but perfects it and uplifts in order to place it at the service of the Ishwara in His Lila. He accepts the Jnanalipsa and purifying it of desire turns it into a divine reaching out towards Prakasha of knowledge; this divine desireless reaching out of Brahman in personality to Brahman in the vişaya or object, is the new sense which lipsā acquires in the language of the siddha.

 

JNANAPRAKASHA

Jñāna includes both the Para and the Apara Vidya; the knowledge of the Brahman in Himself and the knowledge of the world; but the Yogin, reversing the order of the worldly mind, seeks to know Brahman first and, through Brahman, the world. Scientific knowledge, worldly information and instruction are to him secondary objects, not as it is with the ordinary scholar and scientist, his primary aim. Nevertheless these too we must take into our scope and give room to God's full joy in the world. The methods of the Yogin are also different for he tends more and  

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more to the use of direct vision and the faculties of the Vijnana and less and less to intellectual means. The ordinary man studies object from outside and infers its inner nature from the results, his external study. The Yogin seeks to get inside the object, know it from within and use external study only as a means of confirming his view of the outward action resulting from an already known inner nature.

 

BRAHMAVARCHASYA

        Brahmavarcasya is the force of Jnana working from within man, which tends to manifest the divine light, the divine power, the divine qualities in the human being.


STHAIRYA


        Sthairyam is the capacity of fixity in Jnana; the man who is sthira is able to hold the light and power that enters into him without stumbling or being dazzled and blinded by their shock and to receive and express the divine forces in himself without being carried away by them and subjected to the blind rushing stream of Prakriti. He has the dhāranasāmarthyam and does not from incapacity of the Adhara lose or spill these things as they enter into him.

   
KSHATRATEJAS

Abhayam, sāhasam, yaśolipsā, ātmaślāghā iti ksatratejah  


 ABHAYA AND SAHASA


   
    
Abhayam is the passive freedom from fear which with a bold calmness meets and receives every menace of danger and shock of misfortune.

        Sāhasam is the active courage and daring which shrinks from no enterprise however difficult or perilous, and cannot be dismayed or depressed either by the strength or the success of the opposing forces.

 

YASHAS

        By Yaśas is meant victory, success and power. Although the

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Kshatriya must be ready to face and accept defeat, disaster and suffering, yet his objective, the thing towards which he moves, is yaśas. He enters the field to conquer, not to suffer. Suffering is only a means towards victory. Here again the reaching out, the lipsā must come to be free from desire and consist in the divine reaching out of God within to His self-fulfilment as the Kshatriya. Therefore the Kshatriya must manifest in himself the nature of the Brahmin, Jñāna and sthairyam, since without knowledge in some form, desire cannot perish out of the system.


ATMASHLAGHA


        
AtmaSliighii in the unpurified Kshatriya is pride, self-confidence, and the knowledge of his own might. Without these qualities the Kshatriya becomes deficient in force and fails to effect himself in type and action but with purification it becomes no longer the ślāghā of the aham, but the ślāghā of the Atman, the divine self within rejoicing in the Shakti of God and its greatness and its power as it pours itself out in battle and action through the human ādhāra.    

 

VAISHYASHAKTI  

 

Diinam, vyayab, kausalam, bhogalipsii iti vaisyasaktib.

        Dānam and pratidānam are the especial Dharma of the Vaishya; his nature is the nature of the lover who gives and seeks; he pours himself out on the world in order to get back what he has given increased a hundredfold. Vyaya is his capacity to spend freely for this purpose without any mean and self-defeating miserliness in the giving. Kauśalam is the dexterity and skill which is able so to arrange the means, the equipment, the action as to produce the greatest results possible and the best arranged results. Law, arrangement, suiting of means to ends, of expenditure to return, are the joy of the Vaishya. Bhoga is his object; possession and enjoyment, not merely of physical things, but all enjoyment, enjoyment of knowledge, of power, of self-giving, of service, comes within its scope. The Vaishya, purified and

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liberated, becomes the supreme giver and lover and enjoyer, Krishna's amśa preserving and making the most of the world. He is the Vishnushakti, as the Brahmana is the Shivashakti and the shatriya is the Rudrashakti.


SHUDRASHAKTI

               Kāmab, prema, dāsyalipsā, ātmasamarpanam iti śūdraśaktih.

        The Śūdra is God descending entirely into the lower world and its nature, giving himself up entirely for the working out of God's Lila in Matter and in the material world. From this standpoint he is the greatest of the four Shaktis, because his nature goes direct towards complete ātmasamarpana; but the Shudra bound ,has cut himself off from knowledge, power and skill and lost !himself in the tamoguna. He has to recover the Brahmana, Kshatriya and Vaishya in himself and give them up to the service of God, of man, of all bengs. The principle of kāmah or desire in him
must change from the seeking after physical well-being and self indulgence to the joy of God manifest in Matter. The principle of prema must find itself and fulfil itself in dāsyalipsā and ātmasamarpana in the surrender of himself to God and to God in man and the selfless service of God and of God in man. The  Shudra is the master spirit of the Kali, as is the Vaishya of the Dwapara, the Kshatriya of the Treta and the Brahmana of the Satya.


Shakti
 

        Śakti is the perfection of the different parts of the system which enables them to do their work freely and perfectly.

 

DEHASHAKTI


Mahattva-bodhah, balaślāghā, laghutā, dhāranasāmarthyam iti dehasaktih.

               The body is the pratisthā in this material universe; for the working out of the divine līlā on earth it is necessary that it should


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have especially the dhāranasāmarthyam or power of sustaining the full stream of force, of Ananda, of widening knowledge and being which descends in to mind and prāna and the vital and bodily functions with the progress of the siddhi. If the body is unfit, the system is unable to hold these things perfectly. In extreme cases the physical brain is so disturbed by the shock from above as to lead to madness, but this is only in entirely unfit and impure Adharas or when Kali descends angrily and violently, avenging the attempt of the Asura to seize on her and force her to serve his foul and impure desires. Ordinarily, the incapacity of the body, the nervous system and the physical brain shows itself in slowness of progress, in slight derangements and ailments, in unsteady hold of the siddhi which comes and slips away, works and is spilled out. Dharanasamarthya comes by purification of the mind, prāna and body; full siddhi depends upon full śuddhi.

PRANASHAKTI

Pūrnatā, prasannatā, samatā, bhogasāmarthyam, iti prānasaktih.

        When in the physical sensations we are conscious of a full and steady vital force which is clear and glad and bright and undisturbed by any mental or physical shock, then there is the siddhi of the prāna, the vital or nervous system. Then we become fit for whatever bhoga God imposes on the mind and body.


CHITTASHAKTI

Snigdhatā, tejahslāghā, kalyānaśraddhā, premasāmarthyam iti cittaśaktih.


         These are the signs of cittaśuddhi and śakti of the citta or emotional parts of the antahkarana. The wider and more universal the capacity for love, a love self-sufficient and undisturbed by want or craving or disappointment and the more fixed the faith in God and the joy in all things as mangalam, the greater becomes the divine force in the citta.

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BUDDHISHAKTI

Visuddhatā, prakāśah, vicitrabodhah, jñānadhāranasamarthyam buddhiśaktih.

        Manas
and Buddhi need not be considered separately as the elements of power apply both to the six-fold indriya and the thought-power in the mind. Their meaning is clear. For the full sense of viśuddhatā, refer to the explanation of śuddhi in the th Chatushtaya.

Chandibhava

 

Candībhāvah is the force of Kali manifest in the temperament. (The detailed description of this power is deferred. )

   
Shraddha

 

        Śraddhā is necessary in two things:


Śaktyām, bhagavati ca iti śraddhā.


   
     There must be faith in the love and wisdom of God fulfilling self through us, fulfilling the Yogasiddhi, fulfilling our life work, working out all for our good even when it is apparently veiled in evil; and there must be faith in the power of the Shakti manifested by Him in this ādhārā to sustain, work out and fulfil the divine knowledge, power and joy in the Yoga and in the life. Without śraddha, there is no sakti; imperfect sraddha means imperfect sakti. Imperfection may be either in the force of the faith or in its illumination. It is sufficient at first to have full force of the faith, for we cannot from the beginning of the Yoga have full illumination. Then, however we err or stumble, our force of faith will sustain us. When we cannot see, we shall know that God withholds the light, imposing on us error as a step towards knowledge, just as He imposes on us defeat as a step towards victory.  

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III. VIJNANA-CHATUSHTAYA
Siddhis

 

        Siddhis - their justification, dangers and uses: The two first Chatushtayas of the ādhāra have reference mainly to the central principle of man's existence, the antahkaran; but there is one superior faculty and one inferior instrument which have each its peculiar Siddhi, the vijñāna or supra-intel1ectual faculty and the body. The Siddhi of the vijñāna and the siddhi of the body belong both of them to that range of experience and of divine fulfilment which are abnormal to the present state of humanity. They are called specially Siddhis, because of their abnormal nature, rarity and difficulty; they are denied by the sceptic and discouraged by the saint. The sceptic disbelieves in them and holds them to be impostures, fables or hallucinations, as a clever animal might disbelieve in the reasoning powers of man. The saint discourages them because they seem to him to lead away from God; he shuns them just as he shuns the riches, power and attainments of this world, and for the same reason. We need not shun them and cannot shun them, because God is sought by us in His world-fulfilment as well as apart from the world and in the world there are the riches of His power and knowledge which we cannot avoid, once we dwell in Him perceiving and sharing His nature. Indeed, there is a stage reached by the Yogin, when, unless he avoids all action in the world, he can no more avoid the use of the Siddhis of power and knowledge than an ordinary man can avoid eating and breathing, unless he wishes to leave his body; for these things are the natural action of the vijñāna, the plane of ideal consciousness, to which he is rising, just as mental activity and physical motion are the natural action of man's ordinary life. All the ancient Rishis used these powers, all great Avatars and Yogins and Vibhutis from Christ to Ramakrishna have used them, nor is there any great man with the divine power at all manifest in him, who does not use them continually in an imperfect form, without knowing clearly what are these supreme faculties that he is employing. If nothing else, he uses the powers of intuition and inspiration, the power of īśitā which brings him the opportunities he needs and

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the means which make these opportunities fruitful and the power of vyāpti by which his thoughts go darting and flashing through the world and creating unexpected waves of tendency both around him and at a distance. We need no more avoid the of these things than a poet should avoid the use of his poetcal genius which is also a siddhi unattainable by ordinary men or artist renounce the use of his pencil. At the same time there is a justification for the denial of the sceptic and the renunciation the saint, and of this justification we must take note. The saint renounces because when these Siddhis show themselves fragmentarily in a weak ādhāra dominated by egoism, the egoism becomes enormously enhanced, the ignorant sādhaka thinking that he is the possessor and creator of these abnormal powers and a very great man indeed, (just as we find an abnormal egoism very frequent in the small poet and the half-artist, for those who have a really great power, know well enough that the power is not theirs but a gift from God, and feel that the power of God is using them and not they the power); so the sādhaka, misled by the ahankāra, goes running after these powers for their own sake and leaves following after God. The denial of the sceptic is justified by the credulity of ordinary men, who regard these things miracles and invent them where they do not exist, and by the weakness and egoism of the sādhakas themselves and of many who are not sādhakas; for if they catch even a glimpse of these things in themselves or others, they exaggerate, puff, distort and build around some petty and imperfect experiences all sorts of jargon, mysticism, charlatanism and bujruki of all kinds which are an offence and stumbling-block to the world. We must therefore keep in view very strictly certain fixed principles:
        1. That these powers are not miraculous, but powers of Nature, which manifest of themselves as soon as the vijñānap
adma in us begins to open, and are no more a cause for bragging and vanity than the power of eating and breathing or anything; else that is Nature's.
        2. That these can manifest fully only when we leave ego and offer up our petty separate being in the vastness of God's being.

        3. That when they manifest in the unpurified state, they are a dangerous ordeal to which God subjects us, and we can only  

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pass through it safely by keeping our minds clear of vanity, pride, selfishness and by remembering continually that they are His gifts and not our acquirements.
               4. That these powers are not to be pursued for their own sake, but developed or allowed to develop as part of the flower of divine perfection which is by God's grace blossoming out in us.

         Subject to these cautions, we have not to reject these powers when they come but accept them, to be used in us by God for His own purposes and not by us for ours, to be poured out by vyāpti on humanity and not kept for our own use and pride.

 

Vijnana


Jñānam, trikāladŗştih, aşţasiddhih, samādhih iti vijñānacatustayam.

Jnana

        By jñāna is meant that power of direct and divine knowledge which works independently of the intellect and senses or uses them only as subordinate assistants. It perceives the things that are hidden from the ordinary man, helps us to cease seeing the world in the terms of our sense experience and enables us to become sensitive to the great unseen forces, powers, impulses and tendencies which stand behind our material life and deter- mine and govern it. To jñāna the whole machinery of the world reveals itself in its hidden principles; the nature of Purusha, the workings of Prakriti, the principles of our being, God's purpose in His world-workings, the harmony of His Gunas,- Brahman, Ishwara, Atman, man and beast and object, idea and name and form, reality and relation, all these show themselves to the eye that God has illuminated with the sun of His know- ledge, jñānadīpena bhāsvatā.  

 


            Satyasya dŗştih śrutih smrtih pratibodha iti jñānam.

                         Vrtte tu karmalni ca satyadharma eva jñānam.

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        Jnana is of three kinds, jñāna of thought, jñāna of experience 

(realisation or pratibodha) and jñāna of action or satyadharma.

        Jnana of thought consists of three powers:

        1. Drsti, revelation or svayamprakāsa.

        2. Śruti, inspiration.

        3. Smrti, consisting of: 1. Intuition. 2. Viveka.


DRISHTI

 

        Drsti is the faculty by which the ancient Rishis saw the of Veda, the direct vision of the truth without the need of observation of the object, reasoning, evidence, imagination, memory or any other of the faculties of the intellect. It is as when man sees an object and knows what it is, even if sometimes he mot put a name on it; it is pratyaksadarśana of the Satyam.

 

SHRUTI

        Śruti is the faculty by which we perceive as in a flash the truth hidden in a form of thought or an object presented to our knowledge or in the word by which the thing is revealed. It is that faculty by which the meaning of the mantra dawns on the mind or , the being of the sādhaka, although when he first heard it, he Id not know its meaning nor was it explained to him. It is as when a man hears the name of a thing and by the name itself, without seeing the thing, comes to know its nature. A special power of śruti is the revelation of truth through the right and perfect vāk in the thought.


SMRITI

Smrti is the faculty by which true knowledge hidden in the mind reveals itself to the judgment and is recognised at once as the truth. It is as when a man has forgotten something he knew to be the fact, but remembers it the moment it is mentioned to him.

INTUITION AND VIVEKA

        Intuition is the power which distinguishes the truth and suggests at once the right reasons for its being the truth; viveka the power which makes at once the necessary limitations and

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distinctions and prevents intellectual errors from creeping in or an imperfect truth from being taken for the whole satyam.

        The importance of viveka for the purpose of man's progress in his present stage is supreme. At present in the greatest men the powers of the vijñāna act not in their own power, place and nature, but in the intellect; as helpers of the intellect and occasional guides. Directly we get an intuition or revelation, the intellect, memory, imagination, logical faculty seize hold of it and begin to disguise it in a garb of mingled truth and error, bringing down truth to the level of the nature, Samskaras and preferences of a man instead of purifying and elevating his nature and judgments to the level of the truth. Without viveka, these powers are as dangerous to man as they are helpful. The light they give is brighter than the light of the intellect, but the shadow which the intellect creates around them is often murkier than the mist of ignorance which surrounds ordinary intellectual knowledge. Thus men who use these powers ignorantly, often stumble much more than those who walk by the clear though limited light of the intellect. When these powers begin to work in us, we must be dhira and sthira and not be led away by our enthusiasm; we must give time for the viveka to seize on our thoughts and intuitions, arrange them, separate their intellectual from their vijñānamaya elements, correct their false extensions, false limitations, misapplications and assign them their right application, right extension, right limitation, - make, in the image of the Upanishads, the vyūha or just marshalling of the rays of the sun of knowledge, sūryasya raśmayah. Knowledge is not for the hasty mind but only for the dhira, who can sit long accumulating and arranging: his store and does not rush away with fragments like a crow darting off with the first morsel of food on which it can seize.


REALISATlON

Realisation or jñāna of experience is the perception of things through bhāva, - bhāva of being or Sat, realising the truths of being, - bhāva of Chit or knowledge, realising the truths of throught, bhāva of Tapas or force, realising the truths of force and action, - bhāva of love or Ananda realising the truths of emotion and sensation and bliss.

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SATYADHARMA

        Satyadharma is the carrying out of the jñāna in bhāva and action.


Trikaladrishti

 

         Trikāladrşţi is a special faculty of jñāna by which that general power is applied to the actuality of things, their details of event, tendencies etc. in the past, present and future of the world as it exists, has existed and will exist in Time. It deals with particular facts just as jñāna deals with general truth. Trikāladrşti works in several ways:

          1. Directly, without a means or excuse, by dŗşţi, śruti and smŗti.
       
2. By dwelling in concentration on the object, - that process which Patanjali calls samyama on the object, - until mind in observer and observed becoming one we know what the object contains, whether past, present or future, just as we can in know the contents of our own being.

         3. By using as a means some external sign or some indicative Jence such as sāmudrika, astrology, augury etc. These sciences are worth little, if not used by the higher vijñāmaya faculties; for the signs they use are mostly indications of tendencies and to distinguish perfectly tendencies of possibility from actual eventualities cannot be done by following written Shastra or by rule of thumb.

        4. By the two powers of vyāpti and prākāmya which constitute what the Europeans call telepathy.

Ashtasiddhi
 

        Vyāptih, prākāmyam, aiśvaryam, īśitā, vaśitā, mahimā,  

        laghimā, animā iti astasiddhih.

        Aşţasiddhi is of three orders:

        1. Two Siddhis of knowledge, - vyāpti and prākāmya.

        2. Three Siddhis of power, - aiśvarya, īsitā, vaśitā.

        3. Three Siddhis of the body, - mahimā, laghimā, animā.

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PRAKAMYA
 

        By prakāmya is meant the full prakāsa of the senses and the
Manas, by which they surpass the ordinary limits of the body and become aware by sight, hearing, touch etc. or, more usually and more easily by mental sensation and awareness:
        1. Of objects1 scenes and events at a distance or hidden from the normal operation of the mind and senses.

        2. Of objects, scenes and events belonging to other planes of existence.

        3. Of objects, etc. belonging to the past or future the images of which are contained in the object of our study.

        4. Of the present states of mind, feeling, sensation etc. of others or of their particular thoughts, feelings and sensations; or of such states or particular thoughts etc. which they have had in the past and of which the impression remains in the Chitta record or which they will have in the future of which the image is already prepared in the prescient part of the Chitta.


VYAPTI

         To each form of prākāmya, there is a corresponding form of vyāpti, i.e., reception or communication. By prākāmya, for instance, we can have the perception of another's feelings; by vyāpti those feelings are felt striking- in our own consciousness or ours are thrown into another. Prākāmya is the sight of one looking from a distance and seeing an object; vyāpti is the sensation of that object coming towards us or into contact with us. It is possible by vyāpti to communicate anything we have in our system, - thought, feeling, power etc. to another, and if he is able to seize and hold it, he can make it his own and use it. This can be done either by a sort of physical throwing of the thing in us into the other or by a will upon the Swabhava compelling it to effect the transfer. The teacher and the Guru habitually use this power of vyāpti which is far more effective than speech or writing, but all men use or suffer it unconsciously. For every thought, feeling, sensation or other movement of consciousness in us creates a wave or current which carries it out into the world- consciousness around, and there it enters into any Adhara which is able and allowed to receive it. Half at least of our habitual

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thoughts and feelings are such unconscious borrowings.


AISHWARYA

        Aiśvarya is effectiveness of the Will acting on object or event without the aid of physical means. It may work

        1. By pressure or tapas of the caitanya straight on the object that has to be affected.
        2. By pressure or tapas of caitanya on the Prakriti (either the
general world-Prakriti or Prakriti in the object itself to bring about directly the result intended.
        3. By pressure on the Prakriti to bring about circumstances
which will compel indirectly the result intended.

        4. Without pressure, by mere thought that is will, the ājñā
or
ājñām of the Ishwara which Prakriti automatically obeys.

              

        The last is the highest power of Aishwarya and its supreme sddhi for here cit and tapas become one as in the win of God himself.

ISHITA
 

        Iśitā is the same effectiveness of the will acting not as a command or through the thought, by ājñānam, but through the heart  temperament (citta) in a perception of need or pure lipsā. Whatever the lipsā reaches out towards or even needs without conscious knowledge of the need, comes of itself to the man who possesses Ishita. Ishita also expresses itself either by pressure on the object or Prakriti or by simple perception automatically effective of its aim. The last is again the highest power of Ishita and its supreme Siddhi.


VASHITA
 

        Vaśitā is the control of the object in its nature so that it submissive to the spoken word, receptive of the thought conveyed or sensitive and effective of the action suggested.
Vashita acts automatically through established control of one na
ture by another, or by the pouring of natural force into the word, thought or suggestion of action so as to produce an
effect on the nature of others. The latter is the lower and ordinary Siddhi; the former the supreme or entirely divine Siddhi. Vyapti is one of the chief agents of Vashita.

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The Conditions of Power

        It should be noted that none of the Siddhis of power can act perfectly or freely so long as there is impurity of the citta, egoism in the thought and temperament or domination of desire in the use of the Siddhi. Under such circumstances there may be occasional use and irregular effectivity of the powers, - a thing not worth having in itself, but useful only as training the mind to give up its own Samskaras and habitual processes and accept the activity of the vijñānamayī śakti; or there may be a regular and effective use of limited powers by fixed Tantric processes (Kriyas). The latter should be shunned by the sādhakas of the Purna Yoga.


The Conditions of Jnana

        It should also be noted that perfect jñāna and trikāladrsti are only possible by complete śuddhi of the antahkarana, especially the exclusion of desire and visuddhi of the buddhi, absolute passivity of the manas, and, finally, perfected action of the powers of the vijñāna. An imperfect and irregular action of these higher powers is always possible and is possessed obscurely by many who are not Yogins or Sadhakas.
 

PHYSICAL SIDDHIS

        The physical powers, mahmā, laghimā, animā, need not be considered at present, as, although belonging to the Dharma of the vijñāna, they act in the body and are strictly part of the physical Siddhi.


Samadhi

        Samadhi is the power by dwelling fixedly of the caitanya on its object to extend the range of knowledge and consciousness through all the three states of waking, dream and sleep, to the realisation of those tattvas of the Brahman to which the ordinary waking consciousness is blind and to the experience, either in reflected images or in the things themselves, of other worlds and planes of consciousness than the material earth or this waking physical consciousness. The consideration of samādhi may also be postponed for the present.  

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IV. SHARIRA-CHATUSHTAYA

Sharirasiddhi
 

        Theśarīra-catu~taya, likewise, need not be at present 

explained. Its four constituents are named below:


Ārogyam, utthāpanā, saundaryam, vividhānandah iti 

śarīracatustayam.

The three general Chatushtayas

        These are the four Chatushtayas of the ādhāra-siddhi. In 

addition, there are three general Chatushtayas-



V. KARMACHATUSHTAYA OR LILACHATUSHTAYA


Krsnah, kālī, kāmah, karma iti karmacatustayam.

VI.BRAHMACHATUSHTAYA

.

 Sarvam, anantam, jñānam, ānandam, brahma iti brahmacatustayam.

VII. YOGACHATUSHTAYA OR SANSIDDHICHATUSHTAYA


Śuddhih, muktih, bhuktih, siddhih iti yogacatustayam.

        The last or seventh is at once the means, the sum and the completion of all the rest. Its explanation is essential to the full understanding of the others and will be separately treated.

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